


Cherry Blossom is the New Pink

by colormesherlocked



Series: Secondary Colors [1]
Category: Naruto, 七つの大罪 - 鈴木央 | Nanatsu no Taizai | The Seven Deadly Sins - Suzuki Nakaba (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Family Feels, Gen, The Mystery of the Pink Hair, no seriously their hair color is the same, so obviously they're related right?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 08:19:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14712497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colormesherlocked/pseuds/colormesherlocked
Summary: "Still, even then, she might not have noticed; but at that moment, the sun reflected off a silver merchant’s wares, the polished surface of a gilded mirror catching the light and sending a beam straight at a head of bright pink hair.Sakura turned her head so quickly she nearly got whiplash.Pink. Pink hair?"





	Cherry Blossom is the New Pink

Sakura fidgeted with the hem of her skirt.

The deceptively soft, pastel-green fabric (“A favorite among _Kunoichi_ , this one! An inflammable, waterproof, anti-freeze armor-weave made for durability and a guaranteed three-year usage, or your money back!”) showed little sign of wear, despite how many hours she had spent repeatedly rubbing and worrying at its edges. 

The carriage lurched and groaned as it went over rough ground, and Sakura bit hard into her lower lip over the idyllic sounds of the horses snorting and neighing, birds chirping and the leaves rustling in the breeze.

This was a terrible idea. What had she been thinking?

 

* * *

 

_“You don’t need to think so hard about it,” her mother said blithely, not even looking up from her scrolls. “It’s not like you have a choice.”_

_“But!” Sakura sputtered, so flabbergasted she couldn’t manage to form the words swirling through her head._

_She hadn’t even seen her mother in weeks! With everything that had happened in Wave... most of Sakura’s time had been spent training, reflecting over her mistakes and trying to sleep through the nightmares; she hadn’t had a chance to do more than greet her mother in the mornings if their paths happened to cross._

_And just when she thought she’d managed to get a hold of her determination as a Shinobi...!_

_The Outerlands? Foreigners? Her absent father.... a solitary journey into unknown territory?!_

_“But... but my Sensei!! Kakashi-sensei, he - and we have training-“_

_“You’re making this out to be a much bigger deal than it is.” Casually sidestepping a frozen, gaping Sakura, she stepped towards the kitchen. She set water to boil on the stove; deft, strong fingers - marked with numerous silvery scars - snatched a container of tea, a pot, and two cups._

_Haruno Mebuki turned from the stove to train a mild look on her daughter. Icy green eyes set in a sharp, aristocratic face framed by long, dark red hair, Mebuki was not a soft woman, and she had never tried to pretend otherwise._

_When faced with the cold strength of her full regard, Sakura’s building indignation died a quick death._

_“You have to understand that this was decided shortly after your birth. What you want or do not want is irrelevant: Having graduated the Academy and reached an acceptable level of intelligence and strength, you are to be presented to your sire’s family for training in the family business. Sage knows what that even means; the man was a simple merchant, and I doubt you’ll find much use for textile production in your career... but a promise is a promise._

_“As my identity was falsified for the sake of the mission, I was only allowed to pass on the details of your birth and not much else; as such, I have had no communication with your sire since the agreement was made (with permission from the Hokage and my immediate superior at the time, of course). You will be going in blind, for the most part, but I have faith that you will not embarrass our family, and will in fact come back stronger for it. Do not let me down in this._

_“Consider it part of your training as a future Kunoichi,” Mebuki added, giving her daughter a distant smile that nearly succeeded in being reassuring. “A Shinobi must always be prepared, and I’m sure you’ll find something useful to do. You’ve always been oddly sentimental; perhaps you’ll find it worthwhile to bond with your absent father?”_

_Laughing to herself as if the very idea were incomprehensibly ridiculous, Mebuki turned back to the whistling kettle, leaving Sakura to quietly despair of her future._

_“Have a seat; there are details we must go over and there is no reason not to have a cup of tea while we do."_

 

* * *

 

The cart jostled again, and it was only through hours and hours of mindless training that Sakura unconsciously shifted her weight to match the shifting boards.

“Doing alright back there little miss?” the driver shouted over his shoulder.

“I...” Sakura’s voice cracked, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten or drunk anything in hours. They had been riding since dawn, and she had been too caught up in her increasingly dark thoughts to keep with her usual diet.

“I’m alright!” she managed to shout back.

“Won’t be much longer now! It’s gettin’ dark, so we’ll be stopping in a few!”

The sun was dropping behind the distant mountains - mountains unfamiliar and strange, in a strange and unfamiliar land.

Even the sight of the clouds with their golden edges against a pink and orange sky did little to stop the swell of fear, anger, confusion, and dread swirling in her stomach. 

 

_ Five days to go.  _

 

The wagon rumbled and shuddered its way onwards, and Sakura curled into herself and tried her best to stop herself from thinking.

 

* * *

 

_“Sakura,” Kakashi cut Mebuki off an hour into their… discussion._

  _‘A civil airing of grievances’ would perhaps be a better name for it: An hour before Sakura was supposed to show up at the training grounds, her Sensei had politely knocked on the front door; ‘politely’ brushed past a half-asleep Sakura and into the living room before she could open her mouth; ‘politely’ sat himself down in front of the kotatsu without asking; and ‘politely’ demanded a cup of tea, and for Sakura to produce her mother, post-haste._

  _What followed was one of the most uncomfortable hours of Sakura’s life to date, as her Sensei and mother both demanded that the other person come to their senses and stop with ‘the crazy talk’, all in an unfailingly (and unsettlingly) polite manner, complete with sickeningly fake smiles and geniality._

  _Sakura - very unsettled and trying to exercise the ninja rule of showing no emotion - quietly made tea and sat unobtrusively off to the side, hoping not to be noticed._

  _Sensei addressing her was breaking the pattern of the past hour, and Sakura, jolted out of her daze, just managed not to flail as she squeaked out a response._

_“Yes, Sensei?”_

  _Kakashi’s single visible eye seemed to burn through her as he brushed aside her awkward sputtering to demand: “Do you agree with this?”_

  _Sakura scarcely knew how to respond to that, and her eyes went to her mother unconsciously. Kakashi-sensei saying, “I’m asking you, Sakura-chan, not your mother,” had her eyes snapping back to him immediately, but did nothing to help her find an answer._

  _But her traitorous mouth said, “Yes,” even as she wanted to say “no” or “I don’t know.”_

  _She closed her mouth quickly, but too late to take it back. Her mother’s back seemed to straighten, even as Sensei’s eye narrowed._

  _“Are you sure? This could be very dangerous for you; we’ve just gotten back from a very dangerous mission (her first mission outside of D-ranks, in case Sakura failed to mention that, Haruno-san) and you’re only a genin. The Outerlands are largely unfamiliar to the hidden villages, aside from the very rare job requests or diplomatic visits. On top of a general lack of Intel, Leaf has no jurisdiction in any of the foreign lands, and we will have no legal recourse to help you should something go wrong. You would be alone in every sense of the word, Sakura._

_"This mission could provide important information for future espionage teams, true; but we can just as easily wait for a better opportunity. If you go into this with half-hearted feelings, you’re just going to get yourself killed; as your Sensei, I can’t let that happen, no matter what your mother - or even the Hokage - might say._

  _“So I will ask you again,” he demanded, and Sakura dared not look away._

_“Are you willing to undertake this journey or are you not?”_

  _“Yes,” she said again, finally, lifting her chin in a way she hoped showed her determination. Sakura could see her mother’s proud - or as close as she came to proud - look, and it made her swell with pride as well... but it did nothing for the rock that had sunk into her stomach._

  _She had said it once already, so she had had no choice but to repeat her assurances; as a Kunoichi, it would be remiss of her to go back on her word. Still, the rock would not disappear no matter how she tried to boost her optimism, and with it, a feeling of dread settled as well._

  _Kakashi-sensei studied her a moment longer before nodding in apparent acceptance of her choice. She thought she heard him sigh for a moment, something like sadness, or worry, glinting in his dark eye._

  _All thoughts of surprise-emotions disappeared from her mind a second later as Kakashi sighed again, this time deeply and in a very put-upon way, and said: “Well, that’s that I suppose. Of course, you’re the one who’s going to have to explain to the boys why we won’t be able to participate in the Chuunin exams...”_

  _“EEEHHHHHH???”_

 

* * *

Sakura thanked the owner of the tavern one more time before closing the door to her room with an explosive sigh.

Her very bones ached from the long hours of riding. In the two weeks of her travels, she’d walked, run, hitched a ride on ships and carts and wagons -

_(“I’ve contacted all my connections within the merchant guilds, and I’ve marked out a basic plan for your journey. If you miss a connection at any point, there’s a chance your next ride will not wait for you; think of it as a test of what you have learned since graduation.”_

_“You’re an adult in the eyes of the law, Sakura. What happens now is up to you.”)_

Now - when all that stood between her and an uncertain future was a few days journey in the back of a friendly pottery merchant’s wagon - it felt like all the nervous tension she'd been carrying had run smack into her exhaustion and crumbled into harmless bits of sand. Every worry and swirling anxiety seemed… quiet, dulled - less an immediate problem to stress over and more like she could safely just… shut it all off.

_What happens will happen so… why bother stressing, I guess?_

A yawn caught her unawares. Sleepily blinking away tears, Sakura resolved to stop thinking and get some sleep instead. If the distant future was too far beyond her thinking, then she had best concentrate on the present - which in this case was much-needed sleep.

* * *

 

 

_"Whaddaya mean, Sakura's leavin'?" Naruto demanded hotly._

_Sakura felt a little jolt of happiness at Naruto's very obvious distress at the thought of her leaving. This didn't stop her from smacking the top of his head and nearly knocking him into the dirt, of course._

_"Idiot!" she snapped. "Weren't you listening?"_

_"Mah, Sakura," Kakashi-sensei sighed, "no need to get physical. Really though, Naruto, I did just explain-"_

_"I don't see why we should have to wait for her," Sasuke cut in coldly. He hadn't even looked at her once since Kakashi-sensei had sat them down in a circle to explain the situation, and the air around him had gotten steadily colder as he'd gone on to explain about the Chuunin exams._

_It made Sakura's chest ache to be so coldly and obviously disregarded._

_(Strangely, the part of her that wasn't aching with hurt feelings was feeling very insulted: From the way he was acting, you'd think Sakura had gone out of her way to make sure they missed the exams!)_

_"Now now Sasuke," Sensei chided, "let's not put this on Sakura, hmmm? It's not her fault this mission coincided with the exams. Who knows, the extra time till the next exam might be just what we all need."_

_Seeing Sasuke scoff and look away, Kakashi-sensei's dark eye narrowed the slightest bit, and he continued a bit more sternly:_

_"The Hokage saw an opportunity waiting to happen, and Sakura just happened to be in the right place at the right time to help out; you boys should be happy for her. She has a chance to do Konoha proud, and I'm sure she'll do everything in her power to make that happen."_

_Sakura puffed up proudly at his words, feeling warm enough that Sasuke's disbelieving snort barely made a dent._

_She_ would _make Konoha proud! She would learn all there was to learn and ferret out secret after secret from the Outerlands until Sasuke would have no choice but to look at her and see her for what she was: An amazing Kunoichi and a fantastic choice for his future wife._

_And if in the process she got to find Family, Father_ _..._ something _to fill the empty space in her house and life where some unknown thing had always been missing,_ _well - that was a secret wish she would keep to herself._

 

 

* * *

 

She might not have noticed it.

There were so many unfamiliar sounds, smells, and noises that Sakura was having difficulty not straining her neck from the way she swiveled it back and forth with each new discovery. The marketplace was similar to the main shopping district in central Konoha, but the wares and customers were so different that Sakura couldn’t keep her gaping mouth shut. 

It was a little embarrassing when she caught the merchant (who had offered to show Sakura around, as he wouldn’t be meeting his contacts for another few hours) grinning at her lack of decorum; even more embarrassingly, he’d actually had to drag her out of the way of a few carts when she’d been too distracted to notice them about to run her over.

But it was just so _interesting_ and _different_ , and Sakura really couldn’t help herself. Still, even with her eyes wide as saucers and caught up watching a fascinating display at a metal-working stall, Sakura was a shinobi: Even while distracted, she was trained to notice details and spot anything that was out of place.

Still, even then, she might not have noticed; but at that moment, the sun reflected off a silver merchant’s wares, the polished surface of a gilded mirror catching the light and sending a beam straight at a head of bright pink hair.

Sakura turned her head so quickly she nearly got whiplash.

 

Pink. Pink _hair_?

 

A bright, delicate shade of pink in straight, neck-length strands. The wind caught a few, then, making them flair outwards in disarray, and the owner of said hair turned, revealing a man with eyes crinkled at the corners as he laughed at his blond companion and brushed the strands aside. 

Her feet were moving before she could think to stop them.

“Sakura-chan?” She heard the merchant call, sounding confused, but she was already moving through the crowd, her training coming in handy as she ducked baskets and skirts and haggling customers.

The man stood a head taller than nearly everyone around him, his bright head a shining beacon as it bobbed and weaved through the crowd a good ways ahead of her, and Sakura headed steadily towards it with a strong determination not to lose sight of it (helped along by a judicious application of elbows to unmoving bodies).

She closed the distance with each step, her quick pace making up the difference as her target leisurely moved about the marketplace with no apparent goal.

Unfortunately, when she was a few scant yards from her goal, she failed to notice a group of young men turning down a side street until she was nearly upon them, and she was forced to look away to keep from colliding with the one at the front. Swerving to avoid them and ducking a hand that had been outstretched to stop her fall, Sakura turned to look -

 

And the man was gone. 

 

_No_ , Sakura thought, gritting her teeth against the strong urge to cry in frustration. _No_. _I won’t lose him, not now!_

Her next step turned into more of a leap as she made for the last place her eyes had seen pink, having unknowingly pushed chakra into her legs in her urgency. Ignoring the astonished faces around her as she blurred past, Sakura skidded to a stop before the last stall where she had glimpsed the pink head lingering. The stall owner tried to shove fruit of some sort in her face, and Sakura impatiently slapped it out of the man’s hand, absently noting his outraged screech even as she desperately scanned her surroundings. 

A burst of color to her right turned out to be a bolt of woolen cloth, a bright spot of pink a bouquet of tea-roses in pink and yellow… No sign of a pink head the exact shade of her own; no sign of pink like the blossoms growing heavy on the trees in spring.

A screech built in her throat.

Sakura, noting out of the corner of her eye the seething merchant reaching a hand back to strike her and tensing her muscles in reply, contemplated letting it loose. It might even bring draw the familiar stranger’s attention, and it would go a long way to help keep back the tears that kept trying to gather in her eyes.

She silently cursed herself for not getting a closer look, her mind having zeroed in on _pink_ and brushed aside everything else as irrelevant.

 

_Kakashi-sensei would be so disappointed in me,_ she thought sadly. 

 

She shifted her body to give the merchant as small a target as possible and tilted her head back an inch, letting the man’s hand fly harmlessly past her face. 

What would she do now? Asking after her father's physical characteristics had gotten her nowhere; apparently, silver was not as unusual a color here as it was in Konoha (where ‘silver’ was synonymous with ‘Hatake’) and without a family name, what few leads her mother had thought to give her had dried up quickly.

She had no leads, no options, and no plan. Was this it? Was this the end of the road? Would she be forced to return to Konoha, having disgraced her family and her sensei’s teachings with her incompetence?

She distantly noted the first flying towards her (comically slow, as was generally the case when civilians tried their hands at violence), and was so despondent, she actually contemplated letting it hit, just to have something physical and concrete to ground her.

 

In the end, she didn’t get a choice.

 

A large, metal hand caught the fist before it could reach face. Surprise kept Sakura from moving as she blinked stupidly at the gauntlet inches from her face. 

“Now that’s not any way to treat a lady!” A voice called, loud and insistent. Sakura trailed her eyes from the gauntlet up to the face of its owner and squinted at dark blond hair and incensed purple eyes.

Dark blond. Purple. Sakura tilted her head and squinted, letting the noise of the man berating the stall owner wash over her. Something about this man sparked her memory, but where…?

“Do not waste your breath any further, Howzer. This man will not heed your words for anything short of physically pounding them into him,” a voice spoke up mildly from out of her line of sight.

 

An inexplicable shiver worked its way up her spine, and Sakura felt the strangest sensation of _rightness_ , like this was what she had been waiting for all along. 

 

Ducking under the arm of her literal knight in shining armor (and wasn’t that a laugh, the rest of Team 7 would love it when they heard about this) and grabbing onto the merchant (who was now an unflattering shade of sickly pale) for support as she craned her neck past her savior, Sakura saw -

_\- him_ , standing a few yards behind her savior: a man with a familiar head of pink hair.

“You!” She blurted. Startled blue eyes jerked away and down to meet hers, and at that moment Sakura knew she had been right.

So deep was Sakura’s relief that she felt her legs wobble, and she let herself fall gracelessly to her knees, never once breaking eye-contact. The hand that had been tightly gripping the merchant’s, keeping him from escaping, caught her as she fell and stood her gently on her feet.

“You alright there, little miss?” The blond man asked with concern. When she failed to answer, he turned on the hapless merchant and began another furious interrogation as to what man had thought he was doing.

While his companion was thus occupied, her familiar stranger began to slowly walk towards her.

As he made his way closer, Sakura let herself greedily take in as many details as she could to commit to memory:

Pink, evenly cut hair fluttered in the breeze, an exact match of her own. Bright, sky-blue eyes in a pale, foreign face scanned her own earnestly. Her own eyes scanned his armor in return, the weighty and heavy looking plates of shining metal in silver and blue drawing her eye like a magpie to gold.

It was unfamiliar as it was fascinating, all of it. Everything about this man pulled at Sakura with a single-minded focus. She wondered if this man (a cousin, a distant relative… or even someone closer?) felt the same way.

 

(Oh how she hoped that he felt the same way.) 

 

This stranger - taller than Kakashi-sensei by a few good inches and nearly as intimidating - blindly handed an unwieldy looking blade of unfamiliar make to her blond rescuer (who squawked indignantly and fumbled to catch it) without taking his eyes off of Sakura.

One more step, two. Three. At step four, Sakura’s courage suddenly faltered, and she found herself shifting her feet with the intention of backing up -

Fingers lightly brushed across flowing pink strands, freezing Sakura in her place.

Sakura knew there were certain things that needed to be said - greetings, introductions and the like - but she found each attempt ending with the words dying in her throat.

 

Thankfully, her stranger decided to speak first. 

 

“The exact same shade,” the man - a close relative, he had to be - murmured, eyes going distant for a moment. 

Up close, Sakura could see stress lines around his eyes and mouth, and his eyes (her eyes, the same fold in the lid and thick lashes that had always set Sakura apart from her peers) looked tired. It made him look old, older than his youthful appearance would suggest. Sakura had put him at anywhere from twenty to twenty-three, at most, but now she began to doubt her initial assessment. 

They looked anything but tired, however, when those blue eyes caught her gaze and sharpened.

“Your hair, it is… Who are you?” he demanded. “Where are you from, where - who are your parents?”

Sakura blinked once, twice. Then she made an involuntary sound in her throat as the meaning of what he’d said registered.

“You don’t-” she stopped, inhaling deeply in the hopes of hiding her dismay. “You don’t know who I am.”

It wasn’t a question, and Sakura felt something ache in her chest as the man showed no sign of comprehension.

He stepped back then, thankfully, letting his hand drop. “Should I?” he asked, pink brows coming together in confusion.

Her throat was oddly tight, and Sakura had to swallow a few times before she could respond.

“I.... suppose not,” she said, her voice heavy with the weight of her disappointment. “Please don’t mind me, I misspoke.”

She forgot, in that moment, that the only reason the Hokage had allowed this trip was because her mother had managed to pass it off as intelligence gathering. This was where she should make a connection, by lying if necessary; but her eyes stung with the realization that she alone had looked forward to this, that she had been the only one languishing in uncertainty while her extended family hadn’t even bothered to ask after her, and the thought didn’t even cross her mind.

This man (whose matching hair, when her father’s was silver and her mother’s red, brought to mind many questions Sakura would be asking her mother at the soonest opportunity) was without a doubt a close relation. If he didn’t know who she was then… then.

The vague mental picture she had tried to form of a father she had never met, or even heard spoken of (a colorless, indistinct image of a man of indeterminate height, weight and color, that she nevertheless clung to with a deep yearning) faded from her mind like a wisp of smoke, washed away by something that felt like grief and the death of a hopeless dream.

Sakura gave a quick bow, politeness ingrained deeply enough as to make it automatic, even as she gave an empty smile and began mentally assembling a plan to get back to Konoha.

“Thank you for your assistance,” she said woodenly. If she could find the merchant before he finished conducting his business, she might be able to bargain with him for a way back. He seemed fond enough of her, and Sakura didn’t think it would take too much to convince him, particularly if she wove a convincing enough sob-story (and with the way her hopes had been shattered, that wouldn’t be difficult at all).

“I apologize for the inconvenience and wish you a pleasant day.”

She turned on her heel and began to blindly make her way in the direction she sort-of remembered leaving her guide.

Going home empty-handed would be humiliating, but not more than she could bear; she would have to put up with her mother’s cold displeasure for quite a while, of course, but if she managed to get back in time to convince Kakashi-sensei to sign Team 7 up for the exams, there was still a chance -

“No, wait, please.” A metallic hand gripped her shoulder, stopping her mid-step. Its grip was surprisingly light, and Sakura dropped her eyes to stare at it in dull incomprehension.

There was a light touch on her cheek next, and Sakura allowed it to guide her eyes up to meet blue. 

“I do not know who you are,” the man with the pink hair an familiar eyes said gently, slow and deliberate, “and I apologize if I should. But I would like to know you, if you are willing. Would you consent to finding somewhere to sit, that we might continue this conversation in private? If you wish to notify your guardians beforehand, I can arrange to have a message sent.”

Feeling the thud-thud-thud of her heartbeat from the point of contact on her chin, Sakura allowed herself a moment to hope.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a sucker for random crossovers, and the pink hair wouldn't leave me alone, so here you are: enjoy the family feels and the unanswered mystery of the pink hair. This is super half-assed and can barely be considered a one-shot, but this has been sitting on my computer forever, so. Meh.  
> I plan to continue this eventually when I'm in the fandom, so the ending won't be left like that forever! Let me know what you think!


End file.
